The policy goal is to have bicycle trips replace many short car trips, which account for 6% of total emissions from cars, according to a document adopted last month by the European Economic and Social Committee, an organization of transportation ministers from EU member countries. Another report published this year by the Dutch Cyclists’ Association found that if all trips shorter than 7.5 kilometers in the Netherlands currently made by car were by bicycle, the country would reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 2.4 million tons. That’s about one-eighth of the amount of emissions it would need to reduce to meet the Kyoto Protocol.<\/p>\n
Officials from some American cities have made pilgrimages to Amsterdam. But in the U.S., bike commuters face more challenges, including strong opposition from some small businesses, car owners and parking-garage owners to any proposals to remove parking, shrink driving lanes or reduce speed limits. Some argue that limiting car usage would hurt business. “We haven’t made the tough decisions yet,” says Sam Adams, city commissioner of Portland, Ore., who visited Amsterdam in 2005. There has been some movement. Last month, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a proposal to add a congestion charge on cars and increase the number of bicycle paths in the city. It would also require commercial buildings to have indoor parking facilities for bikes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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With the good weather lately, feeling all crunchy and wanting to save gas and all that I’ve been riding my bike a bit more. For far too long, I’ve been been too paranoid about not having my bike stolen (I got a bike stolen in high school and another in college) and so I’m ashamed to admit that my bike has spent more time in my shed, rather than on the road. But I’ve been totally loving hitting the streets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-bikes","category-environment","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-r4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}